... mitred Thurston—what a Host
He conquered!....
... while to battle moved
The Standard, on the Sacred Wain
That bore it....
The Battle of the Standard was fought in 1137.
"One gleam of national glory broke the darkness of the time. King David of Scotland stood first among the partizans of his kinswoman Matilda, and on the accession of Stephen his army crossed the border to enforce her claim. The pillage and cruelties of the wild tribes of Galloway and the Highlands roused the spirit of the north; baron and freeman gathered at York round Archbishop Thurstan, and marched to the field of Northallerton to await the foe. The sacred banners of St. Cuthbert of Durham, St. Peter of York, St. John of Beverley, and St. Wilfrid of Ripon, hung from a pole fixed in a four-wheeled car, which stood in the centre of the host. 'I who wear no armour,' shouted the chief of the Galwegians, 'will go as far this day as any one with breastplate of mail;' his men charged with wild shouts of 'Albin, Albin,' and were followed by the Norman knighthood of the Lowlands. The rout, however, was complete; the fierce hordes dashed in vain against the close English ranks around the Standard, and the whole army fled in confusion to Carlisle." (J. R. Green's Short History of the English People, p. 99.)
VII. (See [p. 153].)
High on a point of rugged ground
Among the wastes of Rylstone Fell
Above the loftiest ridge or mound
Where foresters or shepherds dwell,
An edifice of warlike frame
Stands single—Norton Tower its name—
It fronts all quarters, and looks round
O'er path and road, and plain and dell,
Dark moor, and gleam of pool and stream
Upon a prospect without bound.
"Some mounds near the tower are thought to have been used as butts for archers; and there are traces of a strong wall, running from the tower to the edge of a deep glen, whence a ditch runs to another ravine. This was once a pond, used by the Nortons for detaining the red deer within the township of Rylstone, which they asserted was not within the forest of Skipton, and consequently that the Cliffords had no right to hunt therein. The Cliffords eventually became lords of all the Norton lands here."
In January 1816, Wordsworth wrote thus to his friend Archdeacon Wrangham.
"Of [The White Doe] I have little to say, but that I hope it will be acceptable to the intelligent, for whom alone it is written. It starts from a high point of imagination, and comes round, through various wanderings of that faculty, to a still higher—nothing less than the apotheosis of the animal who gives the first of the two titles to the poem. And as the poem thus begins and ends with pure and lofty imagination, every motive and impetus that actuates the persons introduced is from the same source; a kindred spirit pervades, and is intended to harmonise, the whole. Throughout objects (the banner, for instance) derive their influence, not from properties inherent in them, not from what they are actually in themselves, but from such as are bestowed upon them by the minds of those who are conversant with, or affected by, these objects. Thus the poetry, if there be any in the work, proceeds, as it ought to do, from the soul of man, communicating its creative energies to the images of the external world."
The following is from a letter to Southey in the same year:—"Do you know who reviewed [The White Doe] in the 'Quarterly'? After having asserted that Mr. W. uses his words without any regard to their sense, the writer says that on no other principle can he explain that Emily is always called 'the consecrated Emily.' Now, the name Emily occurs just fifteen times in the poem; and out of these fifteen, the epithet is attached to it once, and that for the express purpose of recalling the scene in which she had been consecrated by her brother's solemn adjuration, that she would fulfil her destiny, and become a soul,